


every silver lining has a cloud

by thehibiscusthief



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Soulmate AU, but not one youve seen done before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 14:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10122956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehibiscusthief/pseuds/thehibiscusthief
Summary: They said that once your fingertips turned silver, your heart was soon to follow.Iwaizumi knew that wasn’t true.It wasn’t your heart that turned last. That turned first, long before you saw them, long before you touched them. Your heart was pure beating silver the moment you were born, already waiting for someone to show up who could kill you if they weren’t careful.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Frenchibi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frenchibi/gifts).



> happy bday french! when u read this at least one of us should probably be asleep but im guessing neither of us will be  
> everyone go read her fics theyre really good

They said that once your fingertips turned silver, your heart was soon to follow.

Hajime knew that wasn’t true.

It wasn’t your heart that turned last. That turned first, long before you saw them, long before you touched them. Your heart was pure beating silver the moment you were born, already waiting for someone to show up who could kill you if they weren’t careful.

The fingertips, the arm, the chest--those turned long after the heart. Those turned silver when the heart couldn’t take it anymore, beating on its own, without a twin beat accompanying it. The silver fingertips were a sign that your heart had found happiness for a brief second and was willing to destroy itself to find that happiness again.

Hajime’s fingertips had turned silver quite a while ago. By now, his wrists, his elbows, his shoulders were silver, and thin tendrils were creeping back to his heart.

It was just such a shame that whoever else was out there, silver spreading over their chest, couldn’t come back to find him.

-

When Hajime was young, he’d seen silver prick the tips of his mother’s fingers when his father was on a business trip. He’d seen it slowly spread, trickling up her fingers inch by inch, until it reached just past the base of her thumb.

That was when a package had arrived from his father. She’d ripped it open frantically, fingers stiff with the weight of silver. A few moments later, the kitchen table was covered with scraps of paper and bits of tape and she was sitting in the middle of the mess cradling a single hair, sobbing in relief.

The silver had already begun to retreat.

The smart ones made sure to always stay by their partner.

The really smart ones took a piece of their beloved--a bit of hair, a piece of nail, a drop of blood--and worked it into something that could be worn and never taken off.

Some--geniuses or idiots, no one could quite agree--never went out with uncovered skin, choosing to live life alone rather than risk it.

Your soulmate couldn’t unleash the silver if your soulmate never touched you.

Hajime himself hadn’t bothered with it. Whatever happens, happens. There was no use getting all bent out of shape about it. Sometimes people turned to silver. Sometimes people didn’t. 

He didn’t bother with it, that is, until he was in danger of becoming yet another silver statue in a graveyard somewhere.

-

When Hajime was somewhat older, he met a brilliant person in the park. He couldn’t remember their name or their face, but he could remember a smile, a volleyball, a faint call of “Iwa-chan!”

He could remember waking up the next morning to a curiously dead sensation in his fingers.

His mother had screamed when she saw the gleam of polished silver on her son’s hands.

Finding your soulmate was usually a wonderful thing, but not when you met them once at a park and couldn’t find them again.

They must have lived close, at first. Everyone knew the closer they were, the slower the creep was. In the beginning, the silver slithered up his arm slowly as a snake in the Artic. This went on for months and months while they looked everywhere, at all the schools, all the parks, even going door to door for a few desperate days.

They couldn’t find him.

Hajime got used to carrying around a hand that got a little heavier everyday. He found that volleyball--the one thing the boy had left him with--was more difficult with a hand that wouldn’t respond quite as quickly.

But that didn’t really matter, not when he finally timed a spike perfectly and sent the ball crashing into the court with the full force of a weighty metal arm behind it.

-

The last year of middle school, Hajime woke up one night and couldn’t breathe.

His soulmate was too far away to keep the silver held back, and in the night it had spread into his lungs.

His chest was heavy and his lungs refused to draw air in, the stiff silver creaking instead of inflating smoothly as it once had.

He choked out a rasping cry, silver vocal chords rubbing harshly against each other and producing a discordant screech. It wasn’t long before his mother pushed his door open, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

He heard her gasp, then her light footsteps rushing over to his bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glow of her cellphone lighting up the dim room. She spoke frantically for a few minutes, too fast for his tired mind to grasp her words.

“-okay, thank you. Hajime? Hajime, can you hear me?”

He grunted. He heard her relieved sigh.

“Okay, Hajime. We’re going to the hospital, they have something- something that might stop...this. We’re just going to have to hope for the, um, the best, okay?” she said, her words filled with forced hope.

Hajime grunted again. He couldn’t do anything else.

-

Put simply, the hospital was cold. The walls and ceiling were a cold white, the doctors little more than cold hands poking and prodding, and the procedure--

The best part about being almost entirely silver, Hajime reflected, was that it was very hard to feel pain.

Instead, he merely felt a cold bit of iron slip in and out of him, until his silver heart was closed off in a little cold box.

He caught the thread of a conversation, just a few seconds away from blissful sleep-

“...just temporary, the Americans say. It won’t last forever, but…”

“Hopefully, long enough for him to meet his soulmate.”

“Yes, if he’s lucky. If his soulmate's lucky, too...”

-

The first day of high school, Iwaizumi walked into Aoba Johsai’s gym, his heart closed off and his silver arms covered by a sweatshirt.

In the corner, a young man with perfectly-coiffed brown hair was chatting animatedly to the coaches. Oddly enough, he was wearing a loose T-shirt, rather than the warm-up gear most of the other students in the gym were wearing. 

A loose T-shirt that displayed the silver coiling around his arms.

So there was someone else here who had lost his soulmate. Interesting.

Iwaizumi handed his club application--just a formality, really--to one of the assistant coaches before hesitantly walking into the gym. He kept an eye on the young man with silver arms, still talking a mile a minute. He was gesturing wildly along with his words, almost dropping the volleyball under his arm several times. The coaches were smiling.

Odd, his shoulder was getting kind of itchy…

He absentmindedly slipped a hand under the neckline of his sweatshirt, beginning to scratch. He kept scratching as the captain of the team stood up, clapping to get everyone’s attention, and began to talk about how wonderful Aoba Johsai’s volleyball team was, and how sure he was that they would go to Nationals this year, and hey first year why is silver falling everywhere?

Iwaizumi startled. He slowly took his hand away from his shoulder, hesitant to look at it.

Silver...falling off?

But that would only happen if his soulmate were near.

He gulped.

He dragged his eyes down to his hand.

He gasped.

There were flakes of silver covering his hand that weren’t part of the metal. Barely breathing, he tugged the neck of his sweatshirt aside and craned his head to look at his shoulder.

Where hard silver once had been, patches of soft flesh were showing through.

He could feel it fading now, sensation returning to places that hadn’t felt anything for years. He frantically rolled up his sleeve, watching the silver run down his arm, quicker and quicker every second, until all that remained was the smallest dot on the tip of each finger. He turned his arm around a few times, marvelling at the skin covering his arm. He flexed his fingers, testing the flexibility that no metal could hold.

Finally, he looked up. 

The members of the volleyball club were all looking at his arm in wonder--

Except for one.

The brown-haired boy was looking at his own hands, hands that Iwaizumi  _ knew _ had been silver just a few moments before.

He looked up to meet Iwaizumi’s eyes, holding his gaze for a few seconds before breaking into relieved laughter. He wasn’t sure who moved first, but somehow, they ended up holding each other in a grasp so strong it was a wonder they stood it without metal limbs.

They’d finally found each other, and now, the only part of them that was silver was their hearts, carrying a love just as precious as any metal.

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: reasons not to homeschool your child and several years later take a family trip to america bc they will meet their soulmate once and then almost die and have to get an emergency procedure  
> idk man  
> [tumblr](http://thehibiscusthief.tumblr.com)


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